Balers and similar machines have been employed for many years in the agricultural industries for gathering and packaging agricultural crops, for example hay, into bales. The bales are then used for purposes including feeding livestock. As baler technology developed, and particularly with the advent of balers for producing large rectangular bales, bale accumulators were produced for towing behind the baler to collect a plurality of bales as they are individually ejected from the baler, and then deposit the collected plurality of bales in an organized group on the ground. Such deposit of multiple bales in a collective group provides greater efficiency in later collecting of the bales from the field compared to dropping of bales individually onto the ground directly from the baler.
The present invention relates particularly to bale accumulators that are configured to deposit an accumulation of rectangular bales on the ground in a vertical stack.
Vertical stacking accumulators are known in the art that arrange rectangular bales in a single vertical stack by lifting the first bales that arrives at a stacking station of the accumulator into an elevated position to accommodate conveyance of the next bale into a position underlying the elevated bale at the stacking station, whereupon the elevated bale is then seated atop the underlying bale to achieve a stacked condition of these two bales. The process of lifting the current bales at the stacking station to admit a next bale beneath them, and seating the lifted bales on the newly admitted lower bale may be repeated at least once, thereby creating a vertical stack of at least three bales. Examples of such vertical stacking accumulators are disclosed in European Patent Application Publications 0687408, 2064936 and 0959661. U.K. Patent Application GB 2053081 teaches a vertical stacking accumulator that likewise lifts bales from a first station to an elevated position to admit the next bale beneath the raised bales, but instead of then lowering the raised bales down onto the latest bale, it instead then feeds the latest bale upwardly to a platform level at which the previously raised bales are situated.
The disclose accumulator of the present application follows this same general stacking routine as the forgoing prior art, raising the first bale to admit the next bale on which the first bale is then seated, but includes several unique features that are lacking in the prior art accumulators and are believed to provide notable advantage over same.
Other types of bale accumulators known in the art, but also differing significantly from the present invention, are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 1,763,446 by Sancken, U.S. Pat. No. 2,649,982 by Ray, U.S. Pat. No. 3,189,387 by Nieto Jr., U.S. Pat. No. 4,053,064 by Stewart, U.S. Pat. No. 4,215,964 by Schrag et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,844,675 by Strosser et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,829,238 by Branson, U.S. Pat. No. 5,842,823 by Kohnen et al., U.S. Pat. No. 6,851,908 by Bergen et al., U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,295,776, 5,477,668, 5,511,921 and 6,240,712 by Meijer.